The Taming of the Queen (59 page)

She rises from the table without a word. We all watch her walk down the length of the great hall, everyone praying that she will return with an invitation to visit the king’s rooms and that we will find ourselves suddenly high in his volatile favour. But she is not gone long.

‘His Majesty is in pain with the injury from his leg.’ She speaks calmly but her face is white. ‘His doctor is with him, he is resting. He says that he will send for you later and that he wishes you a very good day.’

Everyone hears it. It is like a blast from the horns of the hunt. It is open season on heretics at court and everyone knows that the greatest prey, the one who carries the greatest bounty on her head, is me.

I smile. ‘Then we’ll go to my rooms for an hour or two and ride out later.’ I turn to my master of horse. ‘We’ll all ride,’ I say.

He bows and gives me his hand as I step down from the dais and walk through the silently bowing court. I smile and nod from left to right. Nobody shall say that I looked afraid.

When we get to my rooms Nan, Maud Lane and Elizabeth Tyrwhit are there, waiting for us to come back from breakfast. Nan is seated in her favourite spot in the window seat, her hands folded in her lap, the picture of womanly patience. Something about her powerful rigidity warns me that she has not returned to safety. I walk into the room and I stop myself running to her. I don’t fling myself into her arms. I stand in the centre of the room and I say very clearly, so that everyone can hear me, and everyone who is appointed to report to the spies of the Privy Council can make their statement: ‘Lady Herbert, my sister, I am glad to see you are returned to us. I was surprised and concerned to hear that you were explaining yourself to the Privy Council. I will have no heresy and no disloyalty in my rooms.’

‘None at all,’ Nan says without a quaver in her voice, without the flicker of an expression on her blank face. ‘There is no heresy here and there never has been. The councillors questioned myself and two of your ladies and were satisfied that nothing had been said or written by us, either in your presence or in your absence, that could ever be construed as heresy.’

I hesitate. I can’t think what more can be said for the listening court. ‘Have they cleared your names and discharged you?’

‘Yes,’ she says, and the other two nod. ‘Completely.’

‘Very well,’ I say. ‘I will change my gown and we will go out riding. You can help me.’

We go into my room together, Catherine Brandon comes in too, and the moment that the door is shut behind us we clutch each other.

‘Nan! Nan!’

She holds me with a fierce strength, as if we were little girls in Kendal once more and she had to keep me from jumping out of a tree in the orchard. ‘Oh, Kat! Oh, Kat!’

‘What did they ask you? Did they keep you awake all night?’

‘Hush,’ she says. ‘Hush.’

I find I am choking with frightened sobs and I put my hand to my throat and pull back from her grasp. ‘I am all right,’ I say. ‘I won’t cry. I won’t go out there with red eyes. I don’t want anyone to see . . .’

‘You’re all right,’ she confirms. Gently she takes a handkerchief from her sleeve and touches my wet eyes and then dabs at her own. ‘Nobody must think that you’re distressed.’

‘What did they say to you?’

‘They’ve been questioning Anne Askew,’ she says bluntly. ‘They have tortured her.’

I am so appalled I cannot speak. ‘Tortured her? The daughter of a gentleman of the realm? Nan, they can’t have done so!’

‘They’ve lost their minds. They were authorised by the king to question her. He told them that they could take her out of Newgate Prison and frighten her into confession, but they took her to the Tower and they put her on the rack.’

The terrible pictures of my dream come back to me. The woman with the feet turned outwards, with a hollow where her shoulders should be. ‘Don’t say it.’

‘I’m afraid it’s true. I think they must have shown her the rack and then her courage enraged them and they couldn’t resist it. When she wouldn’t say anything they went on and on; they couldn’t stop themselves. The constable of the Tower was so appalled that he left them to it and reported it to the king. He said that they had thrown off their jackets in the torture room and racked her themselves. They pushed aside the hangman to do it. One at her head, one at her feet, they turned the wheels. They didn’t want the hangman to do it, it wasn’t enough for them to watch, they wanted to hurt her. When the king heard that from the constable he commanded that they stop.’

‘He has pardoned her? He had her released?’

‘Not him,’ she says bitterly. ‘He only said that they might not rack her. But, Kat, by the time the constable had got back to the Tower, they had been working on her all night. They carried on while the constable rode to see the king. They did not stop till he came back and told them.’

I am silent. ‘Hours?’

‘It must have been hours. She’ll never walk again. All the bones in her feet and hands will be broken, her shoulders, her knees her hips will be dislocated. They will have broken her spine or pulled it apart.’

Again I see the image from my dream of the woman with her wrists pulled from her arms, her arms detached at the elbow, the strange hollow where her shoulders should have been, her strange poise trying to hold her dislocated neck. I can hardly speak.

‘But they have released her now?’

‘No. They pulled her off the rack and dropped her on the floor.’

‘She’s still there? In the Tower? With her arms and legs torn from their sockets?’

Nan nods, looking blankly at me.

‘Who was it?’ I spit. ‘Name them.’

‘I don’t know for sure. Richard Rich was one. And Wriothesley.’

‘The Lord Chancellor of England racked a lady, in the Tower? With his own hands?’

At my appalled face she only nods.

‘Has he gone mad? Have they all run mad?’

‘I think they must be.’

‘No woman has ever been racked! No gentlewoman!’

‘They were determined to know.’

‘About her faith?’

‘No, she speaks of that quite willingly. They had everything they needed about her beliefs. Enough to find her guilty ten times over. God forgive them, God help us, they wanted to know about you. They racked her to make her name you.’

We are both silent and, though I am ashamed, I have to ask my next question. ‘Do you know what she said? Did she name us as heretics? Did she name me? Did she speak of my books? She must have done. Nobody could stand that. She must have done.’

Nan’s smile contrasts with her red eyes. It is the old smile of gritty courage that all women show who have gone through hard nights and come out without betrayal. ‘No. She can’t have done. For see? They released us. We were there when the constable came from London and said what they were doing. They took him in to the king but the door between the council chamber and the privy chamber was open a crack and we could hear His Majesty bellow at them. Then they came out and questioned us some more. They must have hoped that she would betray us or we would betray her – that at least one of us would name you. But she stayed silent, and we said nothing and then they released us. They have dismembered her, God be with her. They have torn her apart like a boned chicken, but she has not said your name.’

I give one sob, like a cough, and then I am quiet. ‘We have to send her a doctor,’ I say. ‘And food and drink and some comfort.

We have to get her released.’

‘We can’t,’ Nan says with a long shuddering sigh. ‘I thought of this. But she has gone through all this to deny her sisterhood with us. We can’t incriminate ourselves. We have to leave her alone.’

‘She will be in agony!’

‘Let it be worthwhile.’

‘For God’s sake, Nan! Is the Privy Council going to release her?’

‘I don’t know. I think—’

There is a gentle tap on the bedroom door. Catherine Brandon exclaims in irritation and opens it a crack. We hear her say, ‘Yes, what is it?’ and then reluctantly hold it wider. ‘It’s Doctor Wendy,’ she says. ‘He insists.’

The plump form of the doctor appears in the doorway. ‘What now?’ I demand. ‘Is the king ill?’

He waits till Catherine closes the door, then he bows over my hand. ‘I have to speak to you in confidence,’ he says.

‘Doctor Wendy, this is not the time. I am distressed . . .’

‘It’s urgent.’

I nod to Catherine and Nan to step back to the doorway. ‘You can speak.’

He draws a paper from the inside of his jacket. ‘There is worse than you know,’ he says. ‘Worse than these ladies know. The king told me himself, just now. I am so sorry. So sorry to have to tell you. He has issued a warrant for your arrest. This is a copy.’

Now that it has happened, now that the worse thing possible has happened, I do not scream and cry. I am completely still. ‘The king has ordered my arrest?’

‘I regret to say so,’ he says formally.

I hold out my hand and he gives me the paper. We move slowly, as if we are in a dream. I think of Anne Askew, stretched on the rack. I think of Anne Boleyn taking off her pearl necklace for the French swordsman. I think of Kitty Howard asking them to bring the block to her room so that she could practise laying her head down. I think that I too will have to find the courage to die with dignity. I don’t know that I am going to be able to do it. I think I am too passionate for life, I think I am too young, I think I want too much to live. I think I want Thomas Seymour. I want a life with him. I want tomorrow.

Blindly, I unfold the paper. I can see Henry’s scrawled signature as I have seen it a dozen times. Without doubt it is my husband’s hand. Above it in a clerk’s script is the warrant for my arrest. It is so. It is here. It is here at last. My own husband has ordered my arrest on a charge of heresy. My own husband has signed it.

The enormity of this almost overcomes me. He does not want to send me back to widowed obscurity – though he could do that, he has the power to do that. Or he could exile me from court and I could do nothing but obey. He could treat me as he did Anne of Cleves and order me to live elsewhere and I would have to go. He could do that, he is head of the church, he can rule which marriages are valid and which should be dissolved. He did that to Katherine of Aragon though she was a princess of Spain and the pope himself said it could not be done; but Henry did it.

But he does not want me out of his sight or out of his palaces, he does not want me to hand back the jewels and return the gowns of the other queens, he does not want me to leave his children and be forgotten by them. It is not enough for me to surrender the regency and lose my power. That is not enough for him. He wants me dead. The only reason to charge me with a crime that carries a sentence of death is to kill me. Henry, who has executed two wives and waited for news of the deaths of two others, now wants me dead like them.

I can’t understand it, I can’t think why. I can’t see why he should not send me into exile if he has come to hate me, after loving me so much. But it is not so. He wants me dead.

I turn to Nan, standing white-faced with Catherine at the door. ‘See this,’ I say wonderingly. ‘Nan, see what he has done now. See what he wants to do to me.’ I hand it to her.

Silently she reads it, she tries to speak but her mouth opens and closes and she says nothing. Catherine takes it out of her powerless hands and reads it in silence, and then raises her eyes and looks at me.

‘This is Gardiner’s work,’ Catherine says after a long while.

Doctor Wendy nods. ‘He named you as a treasonous heretic,’ he says. ‘He said you were a serpent in the king’s bosom.’

‘It’s not enough that I am Eve, the mother of all sin; now I have to be the serpent as well?’ I demand fiercely.

Doctor Wendy nods.

‘He has no evidence!’ I say.

‘They don’t need evidence.’ Doctor Wendy states the obvious. ‘Bishop Gardiner says that the religion you speak for denies lords, denies kings, says that all men are equal. Your faith is the same as sedition, he says.’

‘I have done nothing to deserve death,’ I say. I can hear my voice shake and I press my lips together.

‘Neither did any of the others,’ says Catherine.

‘The bishop said that anyone who spoke as you do, with justice, by law, would deserve death. Those were his very words.’

‘When are they coming?’ Nan interrupts.

‘Coming?’ I don’t understand her.

‘To arrest her?’ she asks the doctor. ‘What’s the plan? When are they coming? And where will they take her?’

Practical as always, she goes to the cupboard and takes out my purse, and looks for a box to pack my things. Her hands are shaking so much that she cannot turn the key in the lock. I put both hands on her shoulders, as if to stop Nan preparing for my arrest will prevent the yeomen coming for me.

‘The Lord Chancellor is ordered to come for her. He’ll take her to the Tower. I don’t know when. I don’t know when she’ll be tried.’

At the words ‘the Tower’ I find that my knees give way beneath me, and Nan guides me into a chair. I bend over till my head stops swimming and Catherine gives me a glass of small ale. It tastes old and stale. I think of Thomas Wriothesley spending all night racking Anne Askew in the Tower, and then coming to my rooms to take me there.